


res novae

by chaosy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Socialist Steve, bucky just wants a nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6801535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosy/pseuds/chaosy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Steve just told a senator to fuck off, live on air."<br/>"Jesus Christ."</p>
            </blockquote>





	res novae

**Author's Note:**

> based off of this tumblr post; shamwowxl.tumblr.com/post/110398927436
> 
> come say hi at roma-nov.tumblr.com!

Bucky is going to go _insane_.

He’s just gotten a call from the NYPD. The officer on the other end of the phone is nervous, awkward, and explains to him that he needs to come down to the 41st precinct to see one Steven G Rogers, who has just assaulted a police officer to prevent the arrest of some kid who was “causing trouble” at the rally today.

Bucky does not, in fact, believe that the kid was causing any kind of trouble at all. He also does not believe that Steve went quietly.

This is also not the first time that this has happened.

Sure enough, as he checks the news on his phone in the cab ride down, there are tweets and pictures surfacing of Steve getting swarmed by a black cloud of police officers. There’s a grainy video of him yelling, “ _They can’t silence you!”_ before seven or eight cops order him into the back of a police van.

It’s a shitstorm that’s already firing up online as he steps into the station. Some people are calling Steve a hero, man of the people and all that. Other people (a lot of other people) are calling him a dirty anti-America bastard and saying that he should be locked up.

Bucky shares the last part of that sentiment because _fucking Christ motherfucking shit not again_.

“You’re an idiot,” he says to Steve once he’s paid the bail and Steve emerges into the waiting room. There’s blood on his lip. Something vicious in Bucky surges up but he pushes it down again.

“Had ‘em on the ropes,” Steve mutters. Bucky’s heart aches a little bit.

He slaps him on the shoulder and tugs him by the arm out of the station, away from the stares. People still look at his metal arm like it belongs in a zoo. Makes it pretty difficult for Bucky to rid himself of that sentiment, let alone them.

“I’m serious, Steve, you gotta stop. Figure the SHIELD press officer is gonna go into cardiac arrest one of these days,” he says to him, back in the cab.

Steve scowls. “I’m not talkin’ about this,” he says, and Bucky can see the set of his shoulders, the bad mood clouding behind his forehead. He drops it. Steve will talk soon.

He does, the second they get home, actually, which is pretty quick. Steve’s not a sulker but he’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide. “I just - how can nobody _care_ ,” he bites out, viciously, once they’re in the kitchen of the apartment. 

Bucky blinks at him. It’s Steve-and-Bucky language for _go on_.

“The whole team - you’ve sat me down _twice_ this month like I’m some fucking - _teenager_ , really, like I’m some kid who’s got a dumb idea. And not one of ‘em takes what’s happening out there with any kind of gravity, Bucky,” Steve says. Bucky can feel a speech coming on, thinks oh, no.

Steve isn’t paying him much attention. He’s pacing, which means he’s real pissed. “And you know what I hate? The press is gonna be all over my arrest. Gonna be debating it for weeks. And not a single major outlet is gonna talk about how these - those black kids out there, getting brutalised by those cops, getting _murdered_ , straight out murdered, and no one’s fucking _caring_  -”

Bucky has to cut him off, because Steve’s hands are shaking. He presses both hands against his shoulders and forces him down into the armchair and crouches in front of him. “Steve,” he says, softly. Steve looks up.

“We do care. Of course we do. Sam and Rhodey - you think they just brush it off when they’re stopped by cops, or shoved to one side? You think Nat sees some guy asking Sharon to get him his cuppa coffee and doesn’t mind? Or that kid, Kamala, when some guy hollers at her on the street ‘cause she’s wearin’ her scarf? They care. They care about what’s going on out there,” he says to him quietly. “But you’re a guy who’s always burned brighter than everyone, alright? They care about you, too.”

Steve is still upset. Bucky doesn’t know what to say to him. It’s times like these where he wishes he could kiss him but he doesn’t, forces himself away and grabs a wet cloth to wipe off his lip. 

As he pats his face down, a memory comes back to him. He breathes through it and thinks about how a fire was something the serum made into an inferno.

/

He gets a call from Natasha around six in the morning. 

“Steve just told a senator to fuck off, live on air.”

“Jesus Christ.”

The Avengers are out of town, doing press for their latest world-saving antics. As the resident scary one-armed semi-brainwashed assassin, the invitation does not extend to Bucky.

Not that he minds. The scraps of peace that he gets are - good, really. He needs them. But they never last long.

He’s on the phone to Steve an hour later, yelling, because he did a lot more than tell the guy to fuck off. Bucky has seen the footage. He tells him to fuck off, and then tells him that he’s an ignorant asshole who only serves to uphold the capitalist, white imperialist, hetero-patriarchy.

It’s _true_. But Steve didn’t need to _tell him that_.

“When you were a little guy,” Bucky says, as he gets through the door that evening. “I was always surprised how someone so small could hold that much righteous indignation. And you know what? Even now, you never cease to surprise me.”

“Leave it, Buck,” Steve grumbles. He’s on his laptop, booking a flight to Pittsburgh. There’s a big protest there next week and Steve is going to be shouting right alongside everyone else.

Bucky watches him. Breathes out. “You need to take a break from this shit,” he says.

There’s a fight in Steve’s eyes and Bucky thinks, _shit_. 

“Injustice never takes a break, Bucky.”

“For _fuck’s sake_.”

/

They argue a lot and Steve doesn’t stop. Bucky watches the news, watches Steve on CNN as he stares down anti-abortion protesters and guides the women into a car he paid for. He eats dinners alone because Steve is volunteering at eight different shelters or at a rally or generally causing trouble.

Back before, Bucky had a fire in him, too. He’d follow Steve to Women’s Lib meetings, would hang over his shoulder as Steve drew the cover art for underground socialist magazines. They got drunk as lords in the backs of queer bars and ran from police raids together and argued over George Bernard Shaw at the dinner table.

It’s difficult to feel passionate about anything, now that he’s back. Everything is still so bland and grey. His life is one large, smoky crater. Bucky Barnes was scooped out of himself and shoved clumsily back in. He’s just trying to work it out.

He hates it when Steve stares at him reproachfully as he changes the subject to something other than educational reform or economic disparity. Because he _does_  care. He does. But he’s real tired.

“One of these days I’m gonna tie you to the couch,” he snarls, as Steve comes home bloodied up, first time in eighty-odd years. He sits him down on the couch to wipe the blood off his face and the memories are so, so painful. “Who was it this time? Kitty stuck up a tree?”

And then, to his horror, Steve hiccups and there’s a glimmer in his eyes.

Oh god. Oh no, Bucky is shit at comforting these days, and Steve is always so strong and steady as a rock that he doesn’t need to. “Stevie,” he says, and drops the cloth. “Pal, what’s wrong?”

Steve wipes his eyes furiously, burning up red because he hates it when people see him - god forbid - _vulnerable_. “There were _ten_  of them. And they were all trying to - to -”

Bucky presses a hand to his shoulder and sits by his side, horror in his throat. “What, Steve?” he asks, soft.

“They were trying to _hurt her_ ,” Steve gets out. “And I almost - I almost didn’t - God, Buck, what if I hadn’t been there?”

Jesus, it’s been literal decades since he saw Steve like this. The guy isn’t the most emotionally sound, neither of them are, but Bucky hasn’t seen him cry since before the war.

He doesn’t know what to say so he just wraps an arm around Steve and lets him breathe it out. 

/

Steve is back to pissed off the next morning.

“I don’t talk enough about feminism,” he says, over breakfast. Bucky nods weakly. He’s so in love with him in hurts. “I don’t. I talk a lot about racism and homelessness, but I don’t talk a lot about feminism. Especially intersectionality.”

Bucky knows better than to say _what_  so he adds the term to his to-Google list for later. “You can’t cover ‘em all, Steve,” he says to him.

Steve’s expression darkens. “I can try.”

And oh, boy, does he.

Bucky googles intersectionality, finds that yep, he agrees with that, which is unsurprising. Steve goes out and does an interview with Ellen, with Oprah, with Jon Stewart and (and Bucky thinks this is just because he gets a kick out of it) Fox News.

He watches resignedly as Steve speaks with an impassioned voice on TV. He watches blurry YouTube videos of him helping build stages for feminist rallies and snapping at journalists to _shut the hell up_  when they try and push the conversation back on him instead of whatever woman is speaking on the news.

The SHIELD press officer quits the day before Pride.

Pride seems like fun. There’s lots of colour and music and sex, so it seems, and Bucky doesn’t mind any of those things all that much.

Steve gives a long interview the day before, saying of course he’ll be marching, and it’s important to remember that Pride was “started by transgender women, Jon, with a strong anti-capitalist sentiment.” Bucky groans as he watches it on his laptop. Steve mumbles sheepishly behind him.

He watches the march go right past their window. Steve is dressed, jokingly, in a Captain America t-shirt with the shield redone in the bisexual flag colours instead of red, white and blue. Media’s gonna love this one, Bucky thinks.

And god, he doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, but he grabs a jacket and sunglasses and ties his hair back and heads downstairs, into the parade. 

The noise isn’t comfortable. There are a lot of people gyrating. There are a _lot_  of feathers. 

He has no idea how he’s going to find Steve, until he hears yelling.

“Shut your bigoted mouth!” comes a yell over the crowd, and Bucky thinks, ah, there he is.

Steve is arguing with some religious group who are unsuccessfully trying to picket the parade. “You’re a disgrace to America,” one woman says. Bucky rolls his eyes and steps up to his side.

“Lady, Captain Rogers over here stands for everything America _should_  be,” he says, puts on his best Brooklyn drawl.

Steve looks _thrilled_. 

“Hey, Buck,” he says, and god, he’s wonderful. He looks at him like all those cameras around them don’t matter, like the angry Christians to their left can burn up in the sun for all he cares. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and he kisses him.

His mind kind of goes blank for the duration of it. He knows he feels a strong rush of _please don’t punch me_   _oh god_  and there are cameras flashing when he resurfaces. A good number of people are cheering.

Steve looks like someone has thrown him into an icy lake.

Bucky feels a strong rush of fear for a moment before Steve’s expression morphs into his the-rent-is-paid-and-it’s-Christmas expression, from way back when, and he thinks oh, thank god. 

Steve kisses him again, clumsy and brief but still there. Bucky laughs shakily. 

“Are you convinced that I have no interest in anything you say, now?” Steve says as he turns to the woman again. Bucky smothers a laugh against his shoulder.

She squawks at him. Bucky drags Steve off before he can start another argument, a dozen reporters tailing them as they plunge into a cheering crowd.

“You couldn’a saved that for private?” Steve whispers into his ear as they walk. Bucky laughs. 

“I know you,” he says, and he _does_ , god dammit. “You love the drama.”

Steve laughs out loud and Bucky feels something spark in his chest. Something that’s been quiet for a long time, and it roars to life in slow-motion.

“I love you,” he tells him, and suddenly Bucky feels himself enveloped by the fire.

“I love you too. Can I come to that protest with you next week?” he asks him. Steve nods and presses his mouth against his temple.

“Would love to have you there, Buck.”

/

SHIELD appoints a new press officer. On her first day, Steve and Bucky send her a fruit basket.

Call it a preliminary apology, of sorts.


End file.
